Visitors' essays

An essay by Peter Griffiths: Restoring the
order of the books in the Christian Scriptures

Sponsored link.

Restoring the New Testament, by Peter Griffiths.

The order of the books in most Bibles, today, is not the original order. This
may come as a surprise. It certainly did to me. But when we look into it, it
explains a lot.

"By hand of man it's been abused,Our Bible is a book confused..."

But the New Testament is easily corrected. The 1st 5 books, and the last
book, are correctly positioned. It's Paul's letters and the 7 general, or
Jewish, epistles in the middle that have been transposed. Once this is
corrected, it only remains to take out Hebrews from the end of Paul's letters
and place it immediately after Thessalonians and before Timothy. And there you
have it, the New Testament corrected in a nutshell.

Here then, in detail, is the correct order of the books of the New Testament.

Firstly: Matthew; Mark; Luke; John; Acts. This is the 'Torah' of the New
Testament, the first 5 books.

Then comes the 7 general epistles: James; Peter (1); Peter (2); John
(1); John (2); John (3); and Jude. Notice that Jude, the 12th book,
introduces Paul's letters. What Jude says makes so much more sense when we
realise this. It was never intended to introduce Revelation. Notice the
first thing Jude says is that salvation is common. Everybody has it. But
that Christians must earnestly contend for the original faith. Notice they
are not just to contend for the original faith; they must earnestly contend
for the original faith! Something was seriously wrong with Christianity
because of certain men who had crept in unawares and corrupted it...

At this point note that Paul wrote 9 letters to 7 ecclesias (assemblies,
congregations, or groups), and 4 letters to 3 individual persons. The 2nd
group, at Corinth, and the 7th group, at Thessalonica, receiving 2 letters
each. The 2 letters to the 7th (and final) group at Thessalonica deal with
the end time.

Chapter 2 and verse 5 of Hebrews tells us that this letter deals with
"the world to come." Logically and chronologically 'the world to come'
immediately follows after the final 7th group. So Hebrews comes 10th in
Paul's letters, and 22nd in the New Testament overall. This is very neat
because the Hebrew alphabet also has 22 letters in it.

The last book of all in the book of books is Revelation. This is the
27th book of the New Testament. It takes scriptures from all over the Bible,
putting them into the correct sequence.

The vast majority of New Testament manuscripts reflect this order of the
books. Our New Testament is, essentially, an inspired commentary on the Old
Testament. Peter said that a time of refreshment and a restoration of all things
spoken by the holy prophets would take place just before the end of the age.
(Acts 3:19-21) The words of those holy prophets are recorded in the Bible. The
whole world needs a restored Bible.

"For far too long it's been ignored;
The Bible needs to be restored."

Further Reading:

JAC: "This book reveals the original manuscript order of the
books of Scripture and fruitfully considers why the original canonizers
so arranged them. Understanding the divinely inspired order of the books
makes the Bible easier to understand!"

ELI: "This book provides evidence from the New Testament that the
apostles themselves put the New Testament together. It also shows that
the original order of the New Testament was changed slightly in the mid
second century, in an attempt to discredit the Jewish roots of the New
Testament."